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Record prices back in the day.


Dmitry

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Some people may complain that cds and records are expensive, but I think they are a relative bargain now, comparing to 50-60 years ago. Atlantic Records inner sleeves sometimes come with album prices printed on them. How much was $5.95 in 1960 worth comparing to today? $10.95 for a 2-fer. Methinks that wasn't chump change. What was hourly wage for a construction worker or a pizza delivery guy or landscaper,  house painter, someone in their teens-early twenties, working his/her way through college?

My first job paid $4/hr. in the late 1980s. CDs were $11.99, albums maybe $5.95-7.95, tapes about the same, maybe a buck or two more. 

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2 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

$5.95 from 1960 would be $48.24 today. 

$2.98 would be $24.16. 

 

If that's a true conversion of the buying power, then people spent a lot of their hard-earned money on records in the olden days.

I have seen quite a few albums with a discount sticker and a price tag of $1.99-2.99, ca. late 1960s-early 1970s. In fact, just recently bought a Johnny Cash at San Quentin still sealed original pressing, with a "final discount" sticker of $1.99. Thrift store find.

3 hours ago, paul secor said:

I remember paying $2.98 for LPs in the early 60's. That was for mono. Stereo was usually $1 more.

How much were you making per hour then, Paul?

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The big deal at the Denton Sound Warehouse was that they would order the entire catalog of one jazz label and then have a 30 day sale where everything was $2.98. This was ca. 1974-75, when list was, iirc, $4.98, soon to go up to $5.98, and then onward and upward.

My summer job in 1974 was working at a clerk in a liquor store, and I think I was making, like, 5 bucks an hour? Summers after that I did roustabout work in the oil filed for Texaco and was getting 15/hr, iirc, and that was damn good money for a summer job. That was what dudes with families and shit were making.

Honestly, I can't recall wages for straight jobs back then. I just know I'd make it in the summer and then go back to school and make it last, and always with a healthy budget for records built into lifestyle expenses. Once used record stores started popping up, that budget went a lot farther.

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2 hours ago, Dmitry said:

If that's a true conversion of the buying power, then people spent a lot of their hard-earned money on records in the olden days.

I have seen quite a few albums with a discount sticker and a price tag of $1.99-2.99, ca. late 1960s-early 1970s. In fact, just recently bought a Johnny Cash at San Quentin still sealed original pressing, with a "final discount" sticker of $1.99. Thrift store find.

How much were you making per hour then, Paul?

Summer jobs - probably $2,25 - $2.50 an hour, so I guess records were more expensive back then. But the music was better too. :D

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2 hours ago, JSngry said:

 

My summer job in 1974 was working at a clerk in a liquor store, and I think I was making, like, 5 bucks an hour? Summers after that I did roustabout work in the oil filed for Texaco and was getting 15/hr, iirc, and that was damn good money for a summer job. That was what dudes with families and shit were making.

 

That is what, like $50/hr today? Or more even?

New car probably cost $4,500.

You were doing well.

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Market saturation of today? I've said it before and it bears repeating-  you could buy records damn everywhere. This was at the intersection of Teenage Buying Power and Main Street America pre-Wal-Mart.

I lived in a town of <7000 people and off the top of my head, I can think of 5 places within a 15 minute bike ride that sold records. Rack jobbers RULED!

1 hour ago, Dmitry said:

That is what, like $50/hr today? Or more even?

New car probably cost $4,500.

You were doing well.

Dude, I had one summer where I bought a $3000 stereo system and still had more than enough money in the bank to make it through a school year.

So yeah, I was doing well with them summer jobs. Also did hot, dirty, physical work for the money, and am still thankful for that experience as well as the money. Hell, I still know how to thread pipe and flange tubing!

And let's talk about 45s, because a LOT of people bought 45s, remember. The first single I remember buying was in 1966, a Beatles thing, and it was at or around 50 cents iirc. Can't recall when they hit the dollar mark, but I think I might have been out of high school by then.

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2 hours ago, JSngry said:

So yeah, I was doing well with them summer jobs. Also did hot, dirty, physical work for the money, and am still thankful for that experience as well as the money. Hell, I still know how to thread pipe and flange tubing!

And let's talk about 45s, because a LOT of people bought 45s, remember. The first single I remember buying was in 1966, a Beatles thing, and it was at or around 50 cents iirc. Can't recall when they hit the dollar mark, but I think I might have been out of high school by then.

You mentioned an oil field. Hope there was no asbestos there. Several people I knew passed in the last few years, who did work in asbestos environment as long as 50 years prior to mesothelioma taking its deadly hold.

I completely forgot the singles...duuh. No such thing now, is there? The 45s must've put a serious coin in the record companies coffers. Much cheaper to produce than LPs, way more portable. 

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And jukeboxes were 45s too, so one record - literally - could return beaucoup bounty.

"Singles" today are downloads. But you don't get a flip-side, which is a drag, because we all know about the Cult Of The Great B-Side. Hell, count me as a member!

As for the oil field, I don't think there was any asbestos exposure. this was East Texas, and we were roustabouts. What we did was drive around from lease to lease (that's the way it was/is, people would lease the land to the oil companies) and do mechanical repairs, maintenance, pick up trash, cut weeds, etc. If there was a leak, we fixed it. If there was a spill into a pond or anything, we cleaned it up. I remember one time we ahd a spill in a biggish pond that required that we wade out into the pond past waist-high, cast straw onto the water (straw contained the oil) and then bring the straw ashore for disposal. So, you know, a day spent up to your chest in water and crude oil, that's money well-earned, imo. And some of the guys came out of the water with leeches. They'd done this before so it was no big deal, but I was like, oh NO, PLEASE Lord Jesus, keep the leeches away from me. That seemed to worked, because I came out of it leech-free, but, you know, guys were getting them in some pretty personal areas, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, some days were easy, some days were hard, every day was hot, but I think everybody needs to have a Meaningful Life Experience with honest-to-god dirty, physical work, because that shit is ANALOG, you know what I mean?

I'll put it this way - the phrase "pipe dope" still has two distinct meaning to me, and your hands haven't really been clean until you've used waterless hand cleaner.

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To provide some comparison from a different area on the planet where records (including jazz records) were being sold:

Retail prices were relatively rigidly fixed in the late 50s/early 60s and did not vry enourmously. At an approximate conversion of the buying power, taking hourly pay for, say, a skilled worker in a good job or an office clerk for comparison, today's equivalent prices would be about 15 to 25 euros for a single/EP and 60 euros for an LP. Pretty stiff money ...

Later on records were compartively affordable or downright cheap. In the mid-to late 70s "suggesteed" retail prices were more or less still like in 1960 but were often undercut - not in the cutout bins but according to the general price level of the shop itself, and in the meantime wages had increased considerably.

 

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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2 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

Jim, what I meant was the amount of recorded music/genres available on the market back in the 60's as compared to today. It had to be FAR smaller than what it is now. 

Maybe, probably, but otoh, there were a buttload full of local/regional labels serving very specialized markets. Plus the majors had NO idea whatsoever about what was going on with the crazy kids, so they were recoding anybody and everybody. If you lived in a less urban area like I did, there was always some AM station who for whatever reason at whatever hour would play things you never heard before or since, hardly any of it any good.

So, product was being made, a lot of it. But how much, I don't know. I'll find all sorts of "ethnic" records in the crates that no doubt had zero radio exposure for somebody like me, but I guess there was a market. Yiddish, polka, Alpine shit, Spanish...it seems like if the people was here, somebody made records for them to buy. Where they bought them is anybody's guess.

The market may have been just as saturated then, only maybe it was markets, plural, and maybe the social/media segregations/isolations hid it better than it does today.

Then again, maybe not?

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Also, seems that more people went out dancing then. Adults, kids, even livestock, poultry, and marine biologies!

Point just being that music was perhaps engaged more "actively" than "passively" back in yon days of yore, in a social sense. Not just jazz/listening clubs/bars, but sock hops and beer joints, live bands and/or jukeboxes. People too damn cool to go dancing these days...too cool or too old. And maybe that resulted in people buying reocrds for the house? Because, you know, every damn body has a googalillion tracks on their phones today, but you know, you go down into the basement with a chick or a buddy, and there were the records. Some were the parents' records, but the kids had their own records and the kids OWNED that shit, you know, they'd put their names and romantic proclivities on the label of a 45 or on the back of an LP. People got Facebook for that shit now, not 45s.

But that's all old news, not today's headlines.

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Oh yeah, there were records in damn near every room of our house when I was a kid. My father with his Christian and Classical, my mother with her Country & Western and Gospel, my sister with her 70's Hard Rock, my brother with his Chicago and Chuck Mangione proto Smooth Jazz, and me with my KISS and Beatles collection. 

Edited by Scott Dolan
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I bought a charity shop LP yesterday, which helpfully had the original receipt inside - £7.99 (new) in April 1992. According to an online inflation calc tool, that would be £15.48 today, which is cheaper than actual cost (LP's are generally £16 and up here, these days) 

CDs on the other hand - I have plenty of jazz CDs with £14 stickers on (1995-2000 prices), which equates to around £27 now!

Edited by rdavenport
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  • 1 year later...

In the early sixties in UK, prices were rigidly controlled by the majors. Pop albums, including jazz, R&B, country and anything that wasn't classical cost £1/10/6 - about £1.52 in decimal currency. 45s weer 6/8d - £0.33.

A pint of beer in a West End pub - I worked near the Ritz - was only 11d . That's about £0.045!

A pint of beer in a pub now costs about £5.00. That's 111 times the price of beer then. So who's paying a hundred and ten times the price of an LP now for a new album?

Relative prices are the real thing that's overlooked in thinking about historical price changes. Beer and music are what young people bought then and now.

MG

PS and cigarettes, but tobacco prices are mostly affected by government policies - a lot more than half the price of a packet of tobacco here is tax, which is why I buy a year's worth when I go to France. So it's useless for international comparisons.

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